Troubled Waters (19 page)

Walt nodded. “So that's what Rapaport and Sobel are doing with those trailers of theirs. We heard about them, but every time we went hunting, they moved the damn things. I thought it had something to do with drugs, myself.”

“No,” the attorney replied, giving Walt a superior smile. “They're a little more imaginative than that. They're using their illegal aliens to rebuild small plane components—and then selling them as new.”

“I talked to Dale Krepke at the DEA,” Walt said. “He'd like to nail Rapaport's butt for smuggling coke. That's probably our easiest bust, and once we get Rapaport, we can scoop up the others.”

“Not necessarily.” Sawicki stopped pacing. She gazed out the window of her office for a moment, then turned the full force of her blue eyes on him. “Drugs are everyday. Drugs are nothing. But these airplane parts can and will cause deaths if we don't stop them.”

Walt nodded, but a sour taste filled his mouth. “And an ambitious prosecutor doesn't make a name on routine narcotics cases. But she just might if she can grab the headlines on using illegal aliens to make bogus airplane parts.”

“We can all win here, Walt.” Sawicki's smile reminded Walt of the way his wife looked when he gave her a particularly romantic anniversary gift. “You, me, the DEA. All we have to do is exercise a little patience.”

Koeppler nodded. Patience he understood. Patience and giving Jan Gebhardt a long, long leash—and then yanking her chain.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

There was nothing to be gained by staying at the hospital.

Ron wanted to be there for Jan when she woke up. If she woke up. It was with difficulty that I convinced him to go back to the hotel and get some sleep, then come back to keep vigil.

We drove in silence. I fell into bed and dropped into a dreamless sleep that left me groggy. I got up and checked the clock: 11:32 a.m. I splashed water on my face and went next door.

Ron was up and dressed, sitting in his wheelchair and gazing at his laptop computer. I leaned over and saw he was reading input from a newsgroup engaged in a passionate discussion of whether Jan should go to jail for the death of the DEA agent.

I lay down on his bed and groaned. “I feel like death warmed over.”

Then I realized there was something missing. “Where's Zack?”

“Out jogging.”

“You're not wearing the medallion.”

“We're in touch,” Ron explained. He inclined his head toward the desk. I followed his gaze and saw a white plastic speaker box. “It's an intercom,” my brother said. “Zack has a receiver; he can hear everything. If I need him, all I have to do is call and he'll come back.”

“Which means I'd better watch my mouth,” I said lightly. But the thought of Ron's always being monitored, having no sense of privacy, sent a chill through me. Even if it was absolutely necessary for his safety.

“So what did you think of Ted after all these years?” Ron asked. “Any old sparks rekindled?”

“Sparks. Ha. Ted Havlicek used to be the boy next door, and now he's the guy next door. The guy who not only lends you his power mower but shows you how to use it and ends up mowing half your lawn.” It was an odd conversation, given that my brother's wife lay near death, but he seemed to welcome light banter instead of heavy confidences.

“Boy, what an indictment,” he replied with a smile. “I can see why you wouldn't want a guy like that.”

“I'm just not that fond of white bread.”

“So that's why you and he never really got off the ground.”

“It was the accordion picture that did it,” I said. I gazed at the ceiling with the rapt attention usually reserved for star-spangled nights and cloud-picture afternoons.

“Try that again,” my brother suggested.

“I'm serious,” I said, but I ruined the effect by snorting a laugh in midword. “If it had been a guitar, it would have been cool,” I went on. “If it had been a piano, it would have been okay. A trombone, even. But an accordion…”

“You dumped that poor guy because he once played the accordion?”

“He didn't just play it,” I retorted. “His mother had a picture of him on top of her television set. A big, glossy eight-by-ten. He stood there with a big smile on his face, holding the most expensive accordion since Lawrence Welk. It was obvious he loved the thing. I simply could not go out with a man who—”

“And how old was he when that picture was taken?”

“What is this, cross-examination?” I sat up on the bed. “Okay, he was about twelve. Had one of those butch haircuts all boys wore in the fifties.”

“So because he once had a bad haircut and played an unfashionable musical instrument, you, Cassandra Jameson, decided you were way too cool to go out with Ted Havlicek. Is this a fair statement, Counselor?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” I shot back. “I plead guilty and throw myself on the mercy of the court. I was young. Young women make mistakes. Unlike young men, who never try to impress the prom queen instead of asking out the perfectly nice girl who sits next to them in Advanced Algebra.”

“You never took Advanced Algebra.”

“Incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial,” I countered, borrowing Perry Mason's most famous objection. “Besides,” I went on, “it wasn't just the accordion. He was kind of a mama's boy, always sticking around home instead of doing things with us. He stood on the sidelines, taking it all down in that damned notebook of his instead of really getting involved.”

“Ted looks pretty good,” Ron remarked, with a casual air that didn't fool me one bit.

“If you're suggesting that we pick up where we left off in 1969, let me—”

Ron's voice overrode mine. “That would be an improvement on picking up where you left off with Wes Tannock.”

“There's nothing to pick up on,” I said. “Wes and I never had a relationship. It was just wishful thinking on my part.”

“You might try looking me in the eyes if you want me to believe that.”

I turned my eyes toward his. “It's true,” I repeated. “I was a kid with a crush. That's all.” And that was all. The fact that my crush had led me to one hot night of passion under the leaves of the weeping beech was not something I felt compelled to share with my brother. Especially since he hadn't seen fit to share with me the fact that he'd been married for fourteen years.

When Zack came back from his run, he showered and called the hospital. Jan had been operated on during the night for a blood clot. She'd jumped two whole points on the coma scale, but still hadn't regained consciousness. Ron and Zack prepared to visit her. I decided to begin my inquiries into Jan's attack by questioning Dana Sobel, on the theory that I could talk to her feminist-to-feminist. I rented a little red car at the hotel desk and asked directions to the garden apartment complex where Dana lived.

Dana's T-shirt proclaimed: “Life's a bitch, and so am I.” She proceeded to prove it.

“If you want me to feel sorry for that stupid woman, you've come to the wrong place,” she said. Her substantial body sat in a rattan peacock chair. If she'd worn a muumuu, she could have passed for a Polynesian queen about to throw someone into a volcano.

“Why stupid?” I sat on a Navajo-print-patterned futon in Dana's tiny living room. It was crowded with mismatched furniture, much of it the cheap, leave-behind stuff college kids use for their first apartment away from the parental eye. But Dana was fifty; how did she feel about still living like a student?

“Because she didn't tell Harve what she knew,” Dana replied. She reached for a soft pack on the brass table and pulled out a cigarette. I wanted to beg her not to light it, but I knew she wouldn't listen. I steeled myself against an onslaught of smoke and hoped to hell Dana's information would be worth it.

“You think if she had, she'd be—” I broke off, realizing I'd almost said
alive
. And yet she was alive. Whatever alive meant to that still, frail body.

“I think whoever attacked her would have thought twice if he'd known it wouldn't do any good. And if she'd taken her own lawyer into her confidence, the person who tried to kill Jan would have had to kill Harve too. As it is, whatever Jan knew will die with her.”

“You sound awfully sure she's going to die.”

Dana's black eyes narrowed. “Don't try to trap me, Cassie. I was raised by one of the best cross-examiners in the business. For one thing, I wasn't finished. What I was going to say was, whatever Jan knew will die with her—unless she told someone else before she was attacked.” She blew a cloud of smoke and let her lips form a near smile. “Like maybe her husband.”

“How did you know?”

Now the smile became real. “Is that really the most important question?”

“I suppose not,” I replied. I was growing more and more impatient, with Dana or with myself I wasn't quite sure. All I knew was that I was on the defensive, when I'd intended to take the lead. I was supposed to be asking tough questions that would have Dana squirming on her peacock throne. Instead I was the one scrambling for an answer, taking in new ideas and rolling them around in my brain, trying to assimilate them before the next onslaught.

“Okay,” I said. “I get the point. If Jan told Ron what she knew, then Ron's in danger. But she didn't. Ron doesn't know any more than I do, and as you can see, that's not much.”

“Nice try, Cassie. But if Jan did tell your brother what she suspected, then you'd definitely deny it in order to protect him. So I'm not so sure I buy this act of yours. Going around and asking everyone what they know, pretending you don't already have all the information you need.” She stared at me with no friendliness in her dark eyes.

“And of course,” she went on, “you'll take everything you know back to Luke Stoddard and cut a deal to get Ron out of all this. No matter who else it hurts in the process.”

Dana ground her cigarette into a ceramic ashtray that looked as if it had been made by a kid at camp. And perhaps it had been. On the cigarette-scarred end table was a picture of a little boy, maybe five years old, with long curls and a tie-dyed T-shirt over his shorts. Dana and Rap's hippie kid.

I let my eyes roam around the cramped living room. There were bits and pieces of Dana's life scattered around—Indian-made pillows with silver-threaded puffy elephants embroidered on them, feminist books with torn jackets tumbling from bookshelves, a framed photo of a bride and groom on the mantel.

The groom had Rap's prominent nose and Dana's piercing black eyes. I pointed and asked, “Dylan?”

Dana's eyes followed my finger. “Yeah. And that's his wife, Brittany. Can you believe it?” A stream of smoke punctuated her words. “My kid, named after Bob Dylan, with hair like a Marine, marrying a Stepford Wife. They shop at Penney's and own a minivan.”

My smile was wry, remembering Ron's teasing me about Ted. “What a condemnation. They're actually normal people. How humiliating for you.”

“Their oldest kid, Brianna, is getting to where she's ashamed of Grandma Dana. Thinks I ought to wear skirts and panty hose like her other grandma.” Her belligerence was mixed with sadness; some part of her would have liked to be a grandmother to her son's children. But the price was too high.

“The turning point of my life,” Dana said, looking at one of the elephant pillows, “was when I was raped in Turkey.”

“You were what?” Was she about to tell me that her son's father might have been a Turkish rapist instead of Joel Rapaport?

She shook her head and looked into my eyes. “No,” she amended. “The turning point of my life was when Rap told me it wasn't important, that it was just another symptom of Third World anger against American imperialism.” I began to feel as if I were attending a seventies consciousness-raising session. I considered reminding Dana that my consciousness was plenty high already, but she continued musing aloud.

“As if I'd deserved to be raped because I was carrying an American passport.” She took another drag of her cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray, which was near to overflowing with butts. “And then on top of that, I found out that he was using our so-called honeymoon in Nepal to buy and sell heroin. When I learned I was pregnant, I ran home to Daddy—only to find out he'd dumped Mom and married a second-year law student named Mindy. They met me at the airport, and Mindy was even bigger than I was. Her daughter was born two months before Dylan.”

“What has all this got to do with Jan?”

“I'm coming to that.” She waved her cigarette at me. “Rap, as you might guess, wasn't big on paying regular child support. Oh, he threw me a few bucks when he had money, and he bought Dylan all kinds of weird presents, like a gigantic African drum or an Indonesian shadow puppet. But steady money wasn't his thing, so when he offered to cut me in on one of his businesses, I said yes.”

“I hope to God both of you had the sense to make it something besides drugs.”

She nodded, sucking in a lungful of smoke and letting it out through her nostrils like a petulant dragon.

“He got a contract to rebuild used parts for small planes and helicopters. He hired migrant farmworkers to do the actual rebuilding. And when we started working with the sanctuary movement, we used refugees to do the work.”

I took a stab in the dark. “And Jan found out.”

To my secret relief, Dana nodded. “She stumbled on the trailers right after she and Ron were arrested.”

Trailers? What did trailers have to do with all this?

“She went into a long rap about ethics, accused Rap and me of running a sweatshop.”

Sweatshop. Trailers. Illegal immigrants rebuilding airplane parts in trailers. This was beginning to make sense.

“But it wasn't a sweatshop,” I said in a flat voice.